Chapter 5:

Ruby was stirred awake to the loud rhythmic music coming from her phone. She turned over on to her side and blindly felt around to shut off her phone, her hangover had returned with a vengeance. In the midst of looking for her phone Ruby noticed she was laying on the floor and tried to lift her head to look around the room. But just before she could open her eyes the blood rushed to her head and she had to gently laid her head back down to rest for a few more minutes as she blindly shut off her phone.

Once the pain had passed she finally opened her eyes and found herself in dark room. Aw fuck I'ma have to get up to turn on the light. She thought to herself as she slowly and painfully lifted herself up from the cold floor. She used the very dim lighting of her phone to find the nearby light switch.

She regretted not just leaving the room when she had the chance. Bile rose up to her throat, she was forced to put her hand over her mouth in an attempt to push it back. The scene laid out before her was gruesome in every sense of the word. Smiling faces were painted across the walls ugly brown and yellow striped walls in what seemed like blood. Several chopped up body parts were neatly stacked in the far right corner of the room, opposite to it were four piles of nicely folded clothes with not a speck of blood on them. But the one thing that Ruby could take her eyes off of were the four familiar faces with Chelsea grins carved into them. The four severed heads were placed in the middle of the room seemed to stare at her as she collected her personal belonging and rushed out of the room.

The one detail of the room that she did not notice in her rush was the small stack of skin that was cut into letters on the bed and above the bed smeared across the wall in more blood were the words 'Solve this'.

Ruby only managed to get to the outside of the parking lot of the cheap motel before she fell to her knees and let panic seep into her. I have to tell someone about this, but I don't wanna go to jail…what the hell am I gonna do?... I know... I'll call it in and disguise my voice, yeah that's good yeah.

Ruby ran up to the nearest payphone and called the police. After two rings a rough raspy voice of her uncle picked up the phone. "Hello? Vale P.D. what's the emergency?"

Why the hell is he on the phones!? That is a job way below his rank! Ruby took a few deep breaths before deepening her voice and at the same time trying to make it sound as nasally as possible she answered "Yes, I would like to report strange sounds coming from the room next to me. Please come as soon as you can I think someone is getting murdered or something."

"Alright ma'am just give me the address and I'll get someone to you."

Ruby gave the address and wiped down the phone so that none of her prints were left on it.

In all her years of gonzo journalism she had made hundreds of connections that would help her with this but all of that flew out of her and her only thought was to call the one person she trusted with her life, the one person that has held her hand through everything.

Blake.

That was her only thought as she rushed to her apartment, she called her over and over as she ran. Once she finally made it there she didn't even bother with the elevator and just ran up the three flights of stairs it took to get to her apartment. She pulled out her key and open the door. "BLAKE!" yelled Ruby as she ran though the apartment searching for her. After she ran though the apartment a few times looking for her the memory of Blake leaving the coffee shop in a rage froze all of her movements.

Ruby took a deep breath and sluggishly walked over to the front door to close it. As soon as the lock clicked in place Ruby pressed her back against the door and slowly slid down it until she was sitting on the cold hard floor. She looked down at her worn and bloody clothes, ink from all of the gangs she's been in spread across her skin along with the dry cracked blood of her friend on her hands.

"Woop! Party!" yelled Ruby as Jaune set down another tray of drinks at the table Flynt had reserved for them.

"Alright so how are we gonna play this?" yelled Jaune over the loud thumping music.

"Okay so we are gonna choose three random girls and whoever scores the numbers of two out of the three girls doesn't have to pay for drinks for the rest of the night!" yelled Flynt.

They all nodded and began to look for three girls and immediately Ruby chose a girl with short wavy black hair across the club sitting alone at the bar. Jaune chose a girl with short blue hair dancing on the dance floor and Flynt chose a girl with her bright pink hair up in pigtails.

After they agreed on girls they one by one left to get the girls numbers, leaving two people at the table at all times in order to not lose the table. Flynt went first, it took him all of five minutes to have the girl give him her number and make out with him for a bit. Jaune went second, as he migrated to the dance floor Ruby and Flynt began make bets on how long it took him to strike out.

Flynt slammed five dollars on the table and said "Five bucks on five minutes."

Ruby shook her head and placed a five on the table after saying, "Na five bucks on a minute and gets slapped"

They both turned in Jaune's direction and watched him as he approached the girl by busting some fantastic moves in front of her and then said something to her, Flynt and Ruby assumed it was something along the lines of a lame pick up line because the girl stopped dancing to walk away from him. He grabbed her wrist to pull her back but the moment he touched her she immediately turned around and smacked him across the face and stomped away.

"Easy money!" yelled Ruby as she snatched away Flynt's money.

"I swear you're some kind of witch."

Ruby was about to respond but was interrupted by Jaune dropping into his seat next to Flynt. "Don't worry Jaune you'll get a girl's number someday." Laughed Flynt as he patted Jaune on the shoulder.

Ruby stood and walked around the table to ruffle Jaune's messy hair, "Yeah Jaune, not everyone can be as smooth as your cousin Juan." When she saw Flynt raise a questioning eyebrow in her direction she went on to explain. "Juan Arc is Jaune's cousin, his uncle is really into Latin chicks." Flynt shrugged and continued to try to console Jaune as Ruby made her way to the girl with short wavy black hair across the club.

As soon as Ruby made it to the bar she sat down on the empty red stool next to the girl and instantly ordered a drink for herself and another one for the girl next to her. The girl looked up from staring longingly at her phone to look at Ruby and the new drink in front of her.

"Hi I'm Ruby. What's your name?"

"Gwen."

"Gwen? Wow that's a great name."

After a matter of minutes Ruby had her laughing and gazing at her with half lidded eyes. When Ruby made the excuse to go back to her friends the girl eagerly wrote her number down on a club napkin and slipped it into Ruby's front pocket just before she gave her a lingering kiss in the cheek. Ruby watched the girl strut towards the entrance of the club with a skip in her step. As Ruby made her way back to the table she bumped into the girl Jaune tried to hit on.

"Watch where you're walkin' dip shit." said the girl as she glared down at Ruby.

Hmm maybe I can fix things between her and Jaune. Thought Ruby before giving the girl a small smile and saying "I'm sooo sorry, let me make it up to you. Let me buy you a drink at the bar." After a moment of contemplation the girl followed Ruby back to the bar. "So what's your name?" started Ruby.

"Nebula."

"Wow. That's a pretty interesting name, I've never met anyone named that."

The girl shrugged and ordered the drink she wanted. It took Ruby twice as long to get the girl's number and even then she couldn't get her to agree to go out with Jaune but she seemed excited with the prospect of possibly dating Ruby.

When Ruby returned to her table with the boys she showed them the numbers and earned free drinks for the night after apologizing to Jaune.

Everything after that moment seemed to go by in a blur and then darkness before waking up at the hotel. Ruby lifted herself of the ground and reached in her pocket for her pills. She stared at them for long time before sliding them back into her pocket slowly making the bathroom.

Ruby slowly but methodically prepared for a long shower and flashes of Penny's decapitated head flashed through her head.

The flash of memory made her sick to stomach and throw up the contents of her stomach into the toilet. "Penny." whispered Ruby as she remembered the horrifying cuts along the edges of Penny's lips forcing her face into a permanent smile.

After Ruby was done hacking up the few contents in her stomach she quickly got in the shower and cleaned off all of the dry cracked blood clinging to her skin. As soon as she made sure she had washed away all the blood from her body she turned off the shower and dried herself off and dressed herself in a hurry. She rummaged through her old clothes and found the one thing she knew was making her black out.

Maybe if I stop using the pills I'll stop blacking out. She thought as she dumped the remaining pills into the toilet and flushed them.

Now to call Blake, maybe she will know what to do. As soon as I see Blake everything will be fine. Blake will make everything better.

Ruby continues to chant those lines in her head as she made herself presentable enough for her Blake. Ruby looked herself in the mirror one last time before she rushed off the Emerald's apartment to see Blake.

A.N

Well that was a thing. I obviously failed in getting the chapter out in record time like Shadow but at least I got it done at some point. I just had to put Juan Arc in as a joke because I kept misspelling Jaune as Juan, don't ask why I just do. So anyway I hope ya'll liked the chapter and please leave a review and all that jazz.

Don't you all love going clubbing? I love it… until I lost my nice shoes… but that was awhile back, so doubt I'll see them again. But review please, because now the story is picking up steam.